Creating a meeting

Before you start

Before creating a meeting, make sure the following are already in place:

• The committee exists in CouncilPapers
• The venue exists in CouncilPapers
• The meeting date falls within your council's current Council Cycle
• The meeting date and time are in the future — CouncilPapers will not save a meeting that starts before the current time

If the meeting date falls outside the Council Cycle, the form will not save. See Council cycles for how to create a new cycle if one is needed.

Steps

1. Go to Meetings in the left-hand menu.

2. Click Add Meeting in the Shortcuts section of the left-hand menu, or navigate to the committee first and click Add New Meeting from the View Committee page. Using the committee button pre-selects the correct committee and its usual venue for you.

3. Complete the following fields. The Start Date is pre-filled with the coming Monday at 19:30 as a starting point — change it to your actual meeting date and time.

   Field	Required	Notes
   Start Date	Yes	Enter the date and time of the meeting in the format shown, e.g. 22/06/2026, 19:30. Must be in the future.
   Committee	Yes	Select the committee this meeting belongs to. This cannot be changed once the meeting has been created — if you pick the wrong committee, delete the meeting and start again.
   Meeting Subtitle	No	A short description up to 255 characters, displayed alongside the meeting title
   Venue	Yes	Defaults to the committee's usual venue automatically when you select a committee. If you change the venue, a notice "Not the usual venue for this committee." is shown — this is informational only and the form will still save.
   Public Note about Meeting	No	Optional longer text visible on the public portal
   Private Note about Meeting	No	Optional internal note visible to staff and councillors only

4. Click Save. You will be taken to the View Meeting page.

After saving

The meeting is now created and will appear in the Meetings list. The next step is to build the agenda for this meeting.

Note that the committee cannot be changed on an existing meeting. Other details (date, venue, notes) can be edited until the meeting has happened or its agenda has been published.

If the committee has default agenda content configured, you can create the agenda from those defaults when you are ready. See Building an agenda.

If you see an error on the Start Date

Two validation rules apply to the Start Date:

• "It is not possible to create a Meeting before the current time." — the date/time you entered is in the past. Check the date and time.

• "Meetings must fall within a pre-existing Council Cycle for [council name]" — the date falls outside the date range of your council's current Council Cycle. This can happen when the meeting is scheduled beyond the end of the current electoral cycle, or the date has been entered incorrectly. Check the date is correct. If the date is right and the error persists, a new Council Cycle needs to be created — Council Cycles are managed under Council in the left-hand menu. See Council cycles.

Adding your full year's schedule

Meetings must be created one at a time. If your council has agreed its full meeting schedule for the year, work through each meeting in turn, selecting the correct committee, date, time and venue for each one.